How can I modify the .htaccess file so that I avoid having multiple copies of the same index.php file?

Question

I am developing an e-learning website and there is a course preview page for each course on the platform. the file structure of the platform is something like https://example.com/courses/[course_id...]/index.php and the PHP code gets the course id from the parent directory name to look it up in the database. The problem here is that I have to make the same copy of the index.php file in each course directory I make, so is there a way to modify the .htaccess file in a way that I can have only one copy of the index.php file?

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 21 '20 at 00:34

Let's assume you have a file named course.php. This file pulls up a course based on ID at a URL like: http://localhost/course.php?id=1

In your .htaccess

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule ^courses/([0-9]+)$ course.php?id=$1

Then you can go to http://localhost/courses/1 to get course ID 1.

https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/rewrite/intro.html

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 21 '20 at 00:42

Make index.php of root

<?php
#For security course must exist.
# -1 will display 404
$course  = isset($_GET['course']) ? $_GET['course'] : -1;
$courses = [
    '1', '2', '3',
];
if (!in_array($course, $courses)){
    header("HTTP/1.0 404 Not Found");
    echo '404';
    exit();
}

include_once("courses/".$course."/course.php");

Make .htaccess of root

RewriteEngine On
# course/x to /index.php?course=x
RewriteRule ^course/([0-9]+) /index.php?course=$1 [QSA,L]
# protect folder courses
RewriteRule ^courses/(.+)$ - [F,L]

Your directory will look like this.

root/
    index.php
    .htaccess
    /courses
            /1
              /course.php
            /2
              /course.php

Goto http://app.local/course/1 to /courses/1/course.php

How can I modify the .htaccess file so that I avoid having multiple copies of the same index.php file?

2 Answers2